Southern Power, a leading U.S. wholesale energy provider and
subsidiary of Southern Company, today announced that it has entered
an agreement to sell the Mankato Energy Center to Xcel Energy for
$650 million.

Mankato, a natural gas combined-cycle generation facility, will have
a maximum capacity of approximately 760 megawatts upon completion of
an ongoing expansion project. The completion of the sale, subject to
regulatory approval and other closing conditions, is expected to be
mid-2019.

“The Mankato Energy Center is a valuable part of the local community
and the regional energy infrastructure,” said Southern Power
President and CEO Mark Lantrip. “This transaction is a great
opportunity to deliver value for the benefit of Southern Company
shareholders.”

Proceeds from this transaction will be used to strengthen the
balance sheet of Southern Company and position Southern Power to
continue providing clean, safe, reliable and affordable wholesale
energy to its customers across the U.S, including the expansion of
one of the nation’s largest carbon-free renewable energy portfolios.

This year the Southern Company
annual report says increased energy revenues were “primarily due
to increases in renewable energy sales”, yet Southern Power is selling off
a third interest in its solar facilities.
Why? To pay off debt from its failed Big Bet on Plant Vogtle nukes,
and its new Big Bet on stranded assets in natural gas pipelines.
I don’t think the future lies that way, Tom Fanning, abandoning solar power
and getting in bed with Sabal Trail.

These examples are for reactors run by Southern Nuclear,
which is the nuclear unit of Southern Company, which has only six units operational.
About every other month
one or another of them is down. Continue reading →

OSHA certified a “continuing pattern of retaliatory treatment”
at Kemper “clean” Coal after an employee
alerted Southern Company of alleged fraud: SO fired him, refused to hire him back and now he’s suing.
Plant “new nukes” Vogtle also had
impossible projections from the start and is even later and more overbudget,
while anybody from GA-PSC to Georgia EMCs to the Florida PSC
or even PowerSouth in Alabama could bring it down.
Somebody put Plant Vogtle out of its misery so we can get on with solar power
in Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Florida, and everywhere else.

Two new cooling towers and construction cranes mark the work sites for nuclear reactors 3 and 4 at Plant Vogtle in east Georgia. The project is currently $3.6 billion over budget and almost four years behind the original schedule. JOHNNY EDWARDS / JREDWARDS@AJC.COM, in
Plant Vogtle: Georgia’s nuclear ‘renaissance’ now a financial quagmire by Russell Grantham and Johnny Edwards, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 19 May 2017.

Mostly I post about solar and wind power winning, which is what I think is happening.
But sometimes it’s worth a reminder of what could happen if we do nothing about
climate change, and I posted on my facebook page a story about that.
Which actually didn’t go far enough to the real worst case.
Nonetheless, that story has been attacked by numerous parties of all political
and scientific and unscientific stripes for being too doom and gloom.
Yet none of the attackers bothered to mention a best case beyond
“the same world we have now”.
I have news for you: the world we have now is an ecological catastrophe,
and we can do a lot better.
So here’s the real worst case,
the current case, which is far from the best of
all possible worlds,
and the real best case, as I see it.
Plus
what we can do to head for the best case.

In case anybody thinks he was making any of that stuff up,
Wallace-Wells has also linked to an annotated version
with footnotes for every substantial assertion.
The annotated version notes at the top: Continue reading →

On the anniversary of the French Revolution against a corrupt old regime,
the U.S. House of Representatives took a step towards independence from
the clammy grip of the fossil fuel companies.
This has direct implications on Moody AFB.
No more pipelines. Solar power now.

Tom Fanning, our genial CEO host,
said some things I’ve never heard him say before like
Southern Company is
“pivoting towards wind”
and SO’s board soon has to decide whether to go forward with Plant Vogtle
“or not” probably by August.
Fanning gets the
first and
last word in this blog post,
plus a complete transcript of what
I asked and
Tom Fanning’s response,
along with summaries of the other questions and answers.

Please hear me!
I think renewables are exceedingly important in the future.
— Tom Fanning, CEO, Southern Company

While its natural gas percentage remained flat, and coal and nuclear decreased, Southern Company (SO) more than doubled its renewable energy generation percentage in one year.
Maybe I’ll mention that at the annual shareholder meeting in May.